Technical Field
This disclosure relates generally to the communication of error information on a bus.
Description of the Related Art
Communication of information over buses is ubiquitous within computer systems. Accordingly, there are a very large number of computer bus standards. These buses can have a wide variety of footprints. Some buses, for example, may have a large number of signal lines, which may provide throughput for a correspondingly large amount of data (e.g., for a front-side processor bus). A PCI bus is one example of such a bus. On the other hand, certain buses may have a much smaller footprint—for example, an I2C bus, embodiments of which may have two lines, can be used to interface to low-speed peripherals.
Various types of circuits may be coupled to computer buses, including processing elements, memory controllers, peripherals, etc. Such devices pass information including address, data, and control to one another over these buses. From time to time, information being transmitted on a computer system bus may be corrupted. Such unintended changes may occur in a variety of manners—for example, during writing, reading, storage, transmission or processing of data. Data that is “silently” corrupted—that is, without being detected by the computer system—may cause catastrophic failures.